


Say you don't wanna chance it

by InconsistentBell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, UnDeadwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-12 23:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21234266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InconsistentBell/pseuds/InconsistentBell
Summary: Clayton looks at certain things and certain people and he feels a certain way.Or, someone's got a cruuuush





	Say you don't wanna chance it

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Owner Of A Lonely Heart by Yes bc the whole song applies let's be real here

There's such a terrible thing about looking at people.

Of course, in a place like this it's a bad idea to stare in general, just looking at someone wrong can leave you just another shitty grave in another shitty town.

That's something Clayton Sharpe knows plenty about, if not anything else. Years and years of traveling between podunk towns like this one, making himself small enough to be overlooked, big enough to not be looked at. He's learned a thing or two about people's eyes on him.

He hasn't been worried about being caught looking in ages, probably since the last time he's had any proper family to speak of. With one exception that keeps repeating.

The shape of a man has always been better in his eyes. He thought it common knowledge that a man's charm was simply more apparent than a woman's, out in the open instead of hidden under so many layers of propriety and polish. Women are a delicacy, too refined for his palate, an acquired taste. He's never been one for complicated flavors.

He didn't know what it meant at first, of course, but something had made him stay in these wildlands, out of proper cities where he could chase a fortune like more honest men. Instead, he'd become better at being dishonest.

The first time he came across an honest man, Clayton had mistaken him for one of his kind. Maybe the man had mistaken him for one of his, as well. Their eyes met and he flashed a smile and Clayton didn't know what to do with himself, so he waited and saw where this adventure would take him. They danced and laughed like the pair of young idiots full of chances they were, found each other's hands and their smiles and later, alone, they found each other's lips and they found out just how much skin they had on their bodies.

When the man left for the city, Clayton decided he wouldn't think about him anymore. He tried not to think about men in that way anymore. 

Problem is, when you sit in every back corner booth you find empty, your eyes are bound to meet someone else's. Sometimes ladies would chat him up, try and get his attention, a clever move to avoid problems, but his eyes couldn't see anything that made his heart want to kill him the way it had tried before. 

The girls were smart, of course, and he did get into less of a mess when he was making conversation with the professionals, but he didn't go missing his proper share of trouble. He learned the hard way not to stick his nose in business he didn't understand just because a pretty boy told him a secret.

Rough and stubborn as he once was, hoping is something one can fall out of practice at.

These days he can see men, he can see their shapes, their gestures, and he can exist amongst them like just another lost soul in the sea of bad choices. There's no room for hoping for anyone in this crowd. 

He finds himself working with four chucklefucks. Two proper looking ladies, a priest, and Mr. Fogg. 

Mrs. Arabella clearly knows more than she's letting on, Mrs. Miriam seems to have a finger on the pulse of every room she steps in, and Father Matthew doesn't seem like he's gonna be a reliable source, what with his saintly explanations and his determination to pretend he's done nothing that can't be forgiven. Therefore, Aloysius Fogg. 

He's met some of this before, it's helped him. Clayton Sharpe wonders about those old stories of witches, with their devil's marks and their long hair. Mr. Fogg's hair certainly isn't long like in those tales, barely shorter than the Reverend's, probably cut it himself if Clayton's guessing. He vaguely wonders what the feeling of it would be to his calloused hand. 

There's such a terrible thing about looking at people. He tries to find something in Mr Fogg that will make all of it make sense somehow. Some amulet like Arabella's that will tie him to the fucking fog that only swirls for a holy man, a sacred text that could tell him of miraculous saviors shuffling cards. He doesn't trust any of this, but there's nothing he can see that tips him off to Aloysius being anything other than what he knows a man to be. His heart seems caught on his throat and he can't take his eyes off every new detail that reveals itself the longer he stays like this. His mind goes to devil's marks, hiding beneath durable clothes that have seen their fair share of use.

Mr. Fogg is a mystery to a man who's made it his business to not spend a lot of time with messes he doesn't understand. Aloysius is relaxed, and it's driving Clayton crazy. 

He tends to the horses and triple checks the knots, wastes more time than he usually does grooming his beard, his hair, his guns. He wonders what Fogg is doing. How he cares for horses. What he thinks of his firearms.

It's not until he's lying in the shitty bed, looking at the ceiling, that he realises he's been non-stop thinking about Fogg for four straight hours. 

Clayton doesn't scream in frustration, but only because he's too old for these things.


End file.
